Tuesday, 24 November 2009

More about Soul Khaya

Ages ago a few friends and strangers, outcasts and insiders, intellectuals and hopeful nobodies, rich and poor, men and women saw a glimpse of a new way of life in a Jewish Rebel Rabbi called Jesus Ben Josef, or JC for short. After his death, whenever they got together they felt a powerful new presence of their old friend in and amongst them. As individuals they felt as if they got a new change at doing life even though their history told otherwise. They believed that through the death of their friend and this new presence that they feel whenever they get together, they are being made new.

One of them coined a term “Neo Adam” (check out the writings of Paul in the NT) and developed a whole new theology just to get to terms with what it means to live as human being who got a second change.

As a group of friends, whenever they were together (two or more), their old Friend would show up, sometimes as part of the conversation, sometimes as a stranger along the way, but most of the time while they were eating. The more they got together the more they started to believe that whatever was happening to them should be like butter, it must be spread. And so they went out, telling stories, sharing meals, mending broken bodies, minds and souls, changing lives, creating hope. As more and more people joined and changed, they got the feeling that they can change the world.

And they did.

Some called this movement Church, some called it Christianity, but at the start it was just known as The Way.

More and more followers of Jesus are starting to reclaim that first “label”, because somewhere between The Way and The Church we've lost our first love for the Rebel Rabbi and his invitation to be like him. Recently a few friends and myself stumbled upon the term: "Soul Khaya" (in the Zulu language khaya means home) and something inside us kicked like the first kick of an unborn baby. It's as if our imaginations about a new way of being "church" got wings and took flight. Ever since we've been dreaming about being a "Soul Khaya". We hope that Soul Khaya will be about being a Way again, about the “getting together of friends and strangers” in the hope that our Old Friend will show up.